


stare with me into the abyss

by elainebarrish



Category: Avatar (2009)
Genre: "it'll always be Sigourney that saves me", F/F, I'm just tryna get out of a slump, also I purposefully bumped it 2 3k bc I lov that wordcount, this sucks sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 20:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9512390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/pseuds/elainebarrish
Summary: even if you weren't the last two people on this goddamn moon, you think, it'd still be her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Long Drive Home (Not Much of a Girlfriend)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/270881) by [Damkianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna). 



> woooowwwwww this sucks and I also wrote it before betsy's birthday present (which was due in october) for a pairing she doesn't care about bc I'm a fucking terrible person !!!!!!! love you the most betsy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 my excuse is that I didn't want the fic I used 2 get out of the slump maybe hopefully as her bday gift but actually I just can't think of a way 2 write any of the people that I usually write right now !!!! I don't know what's happening !!
> 
> title from you don't get me high anymore - phantogram just bc I've been listening 2 that album all day
> 
> also read long drive home (not much of a girlfriend) by damkianna bc that's my canon so if ur like that doesn't happen it's bc I don't really remember the film I just remember that fic

She doesn’t mean to let you witness her grief, doesn’t mean to let anyone be there, but later you’ll just remember the way that she kicked out at anything close enough, the way her shoulders shook, the way she was warm under your palms as you touched her gingerly. The two of you never talk about it, like how she never talks about you screaming over the chopper’s blades during that nightmare flight to Hometree, never talk about the panic on your face as she slipped in and out of consciousness. 

You’d thought it was going to be her blue body she woke up in, huge in a way that put even her usual six foot to shame, but she sits up, wincing, skin around exopack pink, and demands someone finds her clothes. There’s that and there’s your chopper flying against everyone else, there’s her, huge and blue, saving you from the wreck, there’s your hands around her waist and your front pressed against her. And then after, when you’ve won the first battle and it’s looking like you’ve maybe won the war, and she’s realising that your people have hurt them again, that they will never accept her because she could be blamed for so much. So she cries quietly, and you put your hands on her shoulders, rest your head quietly on her back, and the most worrying thing of all is that she lets you, lets you touch her when you haven’t even seen her hug anyone else, when she can still barely admit that she likes Jake. It makes you worry about the depth of her pain, and you know that she would laugh if you said that to her, that harsh, bitter laugh that she has, know that she would say something about their pain, about how they have lost so much more than she has. But you know a little something about the weight of guilt, know how it can break people.

That night she cries, and you don’t talk about it, you don’t tell her about the war, the one you almost walked away from, the one you weren’t brave enough to challenge, the one that had turned out to just be a warmup for this one. That night you go to bed in that tin can that thankfully no one has the ability to disable remotely, and you think about those months the four you spent here that were some of the best of your life, and you think about how much you’ll miss Maya and you don’t think about the memories that this war has brought back, because that’s old pain and you’re done grieving for people you never really knew. Instead you think about clutching onto Grace’s waist as she flew you over here, you think about the wind whipping your hair into your face and how you’ve never even been on a horse before. You think you sleep, maybe, and you’re mostly just glad that you found somewhere to sleep where you don’t have to wear an exopack.

You don’t go with them back to meet the others, to assess the damage the next day, but when they come back Jake tells you that you were asked after, and Grace smiles at you, and you wonder if that means that you have to get used to her being ten foot tall in a setting that isn’t the back of your chopper. She offers to fly you, tomorrow, and you smile and say that you suppose it’s worth having to wear your exopack for another whole day. She rolls her eyes, and looks around the small room, looks at her microscope, and you think that she’s probably thinking about how all those samples, all that she learnt, didn’t even make a difference in the end.

The next days span ahead of you in basically the same routine; Grace flies you to Hometree, or what remains of it, and she doesn’t say anything about how tightly you hold onto her, doesn’t even make a smart remark about how this mode of transportation is probably safer than Maya was, and you spend the day fussing with your mask more than you really help anyone, but they’re glad to have you, and you do what you can, stare after Grace, and of all of them it’s Neytiri that you get to know the best. She has the most reason to be wary, has been shown the truth of your people through betrayal after betrayal, but she also speaks the best English of all of them, and overhearing Jake’s Na’vi lessons were not enough for you to end up any sort of fluent. It’s her that asks you about Grace, her that notices the way that you look at her, though you think Mo’at has her suspicions; that woman sees far more than you would like.

“You and Dr Grace, you are,” she pauses. “More than friends?”

You laugh, stunned, wonder why the hell Jake thought it was necessary to teach her that particular phrase. “No, no,” you shrug. “We’re not even technically proper friends, I guess. I, well, I have feelings for her,” you admit uncomfortably, and she nods.

“You have not told her?”

“No way, I like all of my limbs being attached,” you laugh and Neytiri frowns.

“You think she will react badly?”

“She’s given me no sign of any other reaction.”

“Maybe she thinks the same of you?” she suggests, and you laugh.

“Yeah, I would like to think that, but I can’t be positive, and I can’t really afford to make things awkward while we’re currently living in a tin can that’s not that much bigger than Maya was.”

“She looks at you too,” Neytiri says softly. “It’s an opportunity that you can’t waste.”

“Maybe we won’t live for long enough for it to matter,” you say brightly with a grin, and Neytiri huffs, and returns to whatever she had been doing.

You realise that you hadn’t considered that something would happen that would completely cut you off from Earth, that you might not be able to go back, and you weirdly miss the concrete and the neon and the noise and the smog. You can’t even breathe the fucking air here, and you just miss the practicalities of not needing an exopack all the damn time. You wish for a giant blue multi-million dollar body, but you’re not gonna get one because you barely got a high school diploma and you don’t have a smart twin to fall back on. You wonder what it’s like to have a tail.

Someone tries to teach you to shoot a bow but even the ones for kids aren’t made for your 5’5” ass. You’re fit but you’re so small, even in comparison to those just starting on the road to becoming warriors. Grace laughs, the time with the bow, but later Mo’at gives you one that is smaller but still beautiful, gives you your own knife that’s the right size for you, and she smiles, surprised, when you hug her. You don’t think it’s a custom that they indulge in, but it hides that you tear up, hides your face while you try to blink the tears away, because you can’t reach under your exopack and wipe at your eyes like you usually would. You get good, better than some of the others who have been wielding bows for years, and you feel the ache all through your shoulders and smile because it feels like progress. You’re way better than Norm is, anyway, and he just says that he’s not a soldier, asks how your Na’vi is doing instead, laughing when you punch him.

Grace tells you you’ve got really good, one night when Jakde isn’t back and you don’t know where Norm is. One change that all this has brought about is that the others have a huge amount of freedom now, while you depend on those that are large enough to ride the local livestock.

“If there’s one thing I’ve always been pretty good at, it’s aiming,” you say with a grin and she laughs. “Anyway I gotta stay in shape now that I’m being chauffeured everywhere.”

“Just don’t try to go for a run, the exopacks aren’t really made for that sort of heavy exercise.”

“It’s been coping so far,” you continue grinning and she rolls her eyes.

“Heaven forbid you actually listen to my advice.”

“I ignore you because I like you,” You tease, and you’re glad that she doesn’t react, glad that she doesn’t seem to flinch at this admission of fondness.

“And I tell you not to break your exopack and die because I like you, but I suppose we all show it in different ways.”

“Aw Doc, you like me? That’s so sweet.”

“Don’t push it Chacon,” she says firmly, and you laugh.

“Ah, and with a usage of my last name to create distance and everything.”

“Or maybe it’s because I’ve never used your first name?”

You laugh, holding your hands up in surrender. “You’re right,” you pause. “Do you even know what it is?”

She rolls her eyes. “You’ve forgotten that I’ve read your file.”

“Anything interesting in there?”

“Not that I remember.” She smiles and lights a cigarette, and you know that she knows that you’d love to read your own file, but you also know that so would pretty much everyone.

“It’s probably all just about Maya being the best Samson that ever flew with me taking the credit for it.” She rolls her eyes again and you don’t let yours linger on her hands or her lips or the way her cheekbones cast deep shadows. You think of that conversation with Neytiri and wish that you could put it out of your head, wish that you could stop thinking about Grace’s voice and her anger and her fucking stupid interest in plants. You wish her a goodnight, and you hope she stares after you as you head to your bunk.

She’s so different with the kids that you absently wonder if she ever had any of her own, think of the way she looks at Jake even though he’s way too old to be the same age as any kids she could have had. You wish you’d got to read her file, it doesn’t seem fair that she at least got to know the basics about you while you’re left scrabbling, wondering about the smallest details, because she’s one of the most ridiculously private people you’ve ever met. You’re looking at her with a soft, sappy look on your face, and she bends down to let one of the kids whisper in her ear, and then she looks right at you, catches you just looking, smiling, and you hope the exopack is reflecting the fucking light or something because you know you’re goddamn traffic cone red right now. She doesn’t say anything, just nods at you, and you swear she’s smirking as you nod back and then find something infinitely more interesting to look at, but when you look back again you swear that she’d just quickly turned away. 

“Chacon, quit staring and come help me,” she half yells across the room even though you weren’t even looking at her, and she’s frowning at something on her datapad and not even looking at you either.

“I wasn’t even looking at you,” you mutter, but you get up to see what the problem is anyway, see that her datapad’s on some kind of options menu that you’ve never even seen before. 

“I didn’t say what you were looking at,” she smirks, and you roll your eyes.

“What are you even trying to do?”

“Quaritch revoked most of my administrator privileges and I’m trying to reroute it or something through someone else’s login but I can barely work this fucking thing usually.”

“Why are you asking me of all people, I haven’t tried to programme anything since I took that one coding class in high school,” you laugh and squint at it over her shoulder. “Maybe Google it?”

“I tried that but this is military level encryption and I couldn’t find a clear guide on how to do it.”

“I’m sure some sixteen year old on reddit has figured it out.” You laugh, taking the pad from her, clicking around a bit aimlessly, and she just takes it back, huffing in annoyance. Between the two of you you manage to hack into something, and it’s more like it was before, and it means she can contact those back at base at least, but it takes almost two hours of passing the pad back and forth, her practically leaning on you to see what you’re doing, and yeah you like a challenge but her watching you try to remember stuff from your sophomore year of high school is way more of a challenge than you wanted. You distantly hope that she’s as flustered as you are, and you wonder if this was all a hoax to get you over here, especially when you look up and she looks back at the pad in your hands instead of on your face, where you could practically feel her eyes on you moments ago.

You hadn’t expected her to be the kind of person to dance around this, whatever this is, but she resolutely doesn’t mention it, resolutely appears not to notice that you’ve both been looking for excuses to spend time together, and doesn’t seem to notice your growing frustration.

You’re both eating at the same time without the other two for the first time in ages, and you’re tired and stressed and she’s been spending so much time as her avatar recently that you’d kind of missed her usual face, the lines and the cheekbones and the smile that you can sometimes coax onto her face. If you’re completely honest you have to admit that you don’t think she looks right without her natural hair colour, and you never thought you’d fall for a fucking ginger of all people.

“Okay, so I get that we’re not talking about it, but also I feel like we should maybe talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” she asks, staring intently into her disgusting rehydrated meal, and you roll your eyes, sighing.

“Come on Grace, we’re literally the last two people on this moon or something you can’t pretend you haven’t noticed.”

She sighs, dropping her fork, looking up, her eyebrow already raised. “I think we should go back to not talking about it.”

“Look, I’m just saying that I’d kind of like to have acted on this tension we’ve got happening before Quaritch comes back with a shitload of dynamite and blows us all up.”

“You realise that I’m significantly older than you and spend half of my time double your height and blue?” she asks drily, and you laugh.

“Oh man, you know I don’t care about the blue thing, it’s kinda late for that. The first time I met you you were blue.”

She lights a cigarette and sits back, frowning at you. “I usually make a point of not getting involved with co-workers.”

“It’s kind of too late for that too, you’re practically already Jake’s aunt or something, you can’t just decide romantic entanglements are completely different. We all left the mission we were here on, we’re all on our own, we’re all carrying our own amounts of grief,” you shrug. “Might as well have some fun while we’re here.”

“So I’m just “fun”?” She asks, and you know that look, that one where she’s daring you to say the thing that means she can retreat, sure in the knowledge that she’s right to do so. She wants you to slip up, but it’s just because she’s scared.

“Grace,” you start, and round the table to lean against it in front of her, boxing her into the chair, actually taller than her for once. “You’re trying to trip me up so that I say something that means that you can be like “I knew it”, and I know that because I know you, even if you won’t tell me anything about your past and I respect you too much to hack into the database and read your file. I just think it would be a good idea, that’s all. I think it would be good for both of us, and we can stop staring at each other when we think the other one won’t notice.” You smile, carefully picking that one smile that you’ve always counted on to charm girls into dates, and it seems to be working.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be terrible,” she manages and you laugh, leaning forwards, wondering if she’ll run away if you lean on the arms of her chair. Instead she leans towards you too, crushing out her cigarette in the ashtray next to you, and you raise your eyebrow, smirking.

“And here was me hoping for declarations of love.”

“You just said that it would be fun,” she reminds you, laughing, and you shrug.

“You were still pretending like you had no idea what I was talking about, I couldn’t come on too strong considering we haven’t been on our first date yet.”

“Oh I was under the impression that all of those times I gave you a lift somewhere was a date. What about that time I rehydrated your meal for you?”

“What? That’s not-” you start, and she cuts you off, still smirking when she kisses you, her eyes sparkling and the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth when she pulls back.

“See I told you that this was a good idea,” you mutter, lips still close to hers, and she just tells you to shut up and kisses you again, the curve of her mouth betraying her smile, your hand cupping her jaw, her arms sliding around your waist, and regardless of whether she’s the last damn person on this moon you think that you’d still be here, doing this, regardless of how many people there were in the way.


End file.
